Perspectives

New Definition of Disability

Every so often it is good to review the basics – especially when they keep changing on you!

Below is a good introduction to the changing definition of the concept of disability as given by the World Health Organization.

The way disability is defined and understood has also changed in the last decade. Disability was once assumed as a way to characterize a particular set of largely stable limitations. Now the World Health Organization (WHO) has moved toward a new international classification system, the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF 2001). It emphasizes functional status over diagnoses. The new system is not just about people with traditionally acknowledged disabilities diagnostically categorized but about all people. For the first time, the ICF also calls for the elimination of distinctions, explicitly or implicitly, between health conditions that are ‘mental’ or ‘physical.’

The new ICF focuses on analyzing the relationship between capacity and performance. If capacity is greater than performance then that gap should be addressed through both removing barriers and identifying facilitators. The new WHO ICF specifically references Universal Design as a central concept that can serve to identify facilitators that can benefit all people.

The WHO defines disability as a contextual variable, dynamic over time and in relation to circumstances. One is more or less disabled based on the interaction between the person and the individual, institutional and social environments. The ICF also acknowledges that the prevalence of disability corresponds to social and economic status. The 2001 ICF provides a platform that supports Universal Design as an international priority for reducing the experience of disability and enhancing everyone’s experience and performance.

Source: Adaptive Environments:
http://www.adaptiveenvironments.org/index.php?option=Content&Itemid=3

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Views of a Well-wisher

There’re two things I want to talk about today - Disability and a black and white film called Shiraz. There isn’t much similarity between the two - other than the fact that few of us treasure the instances when we come across either of them.

I went to attend the Disability fest at Chennai this week. Three days of films about or by disabled people from all around the world. I attended only one day. And yet the films I saw that day were eye-opening in every sense of the word.

Now we have a Disability Law in India. It allegedly “came to force” in Feb, 1996. One of the provisions of the Act that brought to force this right says:

Every child with disability shall have the rights to free education till the age of 18 years in integrated schools or special schools

Sadly most of our disabled people aren’t in special schools, or in Centers, or even in their homes. No points for guessing - they are on the Roads.

6% of Indians suffer from one form of disability or other. The USA has 9%. This isn’t because the actual figures vary- but because the definition of Disability in the US is wider.

(Besides, 6% of our population is more than the entire population of Belgium, Austria, Netherlands, Switzerland, Turkey, and Portugal all put together, so you know how many people we are talking about.)

For the 79% Indians who live on less than $2 a day, and worse that that, the 300 million of our people who live on less than 14 rupees a day, it isn’t just hard - its suicidal to feed for an extra tummy that is not a potential bread-winner. For most families- the disabled (and the aged) family members are considered an economic burden. Sad, but true.

The only way to address this problem is to draw out special support for the disabled.

But in a country where 1 in 2 children goes hungry everyday, is it possible to take care of another 60 million people with special needs? Not really plausible - so we take the easiest way out- neglect them, ignore them and take them to a point where they can neither use force, nor the law to achieve what they deserve to achieve.

How we ignore them- I’ll tell you. We don’t have space for wheelchairs on our roads. Forget that - we don’t have pavements that haven’t mutated into hawking spots and public urinals. For those who can’t keep up the pace with our impatient traffic- life is tough.

Our escalators are built in a way that only people with fully functional lower limbs and eagle-sharp ocular organs coupled with nimble body movements can use them - effectively at least.

I’m not trying to envision a world of Us and Them- not a world where we have different provisions for the Disabled and the Abled - this was one of the things the speakers at the Ability Fest correctly put into my head. Just a world where public facilities can be used by the entire public- including that 6% that exist with the remaining 94%. A world where one sense less doesn’t mean you are written off the constitution, one sense less doesn’t mean you are deprived of what you shouldn’t be deprived of.

And how do things change? This isn’t like changing the government or India’s position in the global economy. This has very little to do with Government laws. The government could help by implementing some laws it has passed, but then the government could also help by implementing a lot of laws it has passed- and then we come back to square one- for a majority of its people, the government is defunct.

So the change begins at a personal level- everyone of us has encountered people with one disability or another. Unfortunately, most of these encounters are at traffic signals. However, for those that live within their or our families, let us open up. All we need to do, is to treat them as we treat everyone else that we know- with love. The disabled are just like us. Their creativity is ample, so is their ability to work perfectly with the remaining four senses. Time and again, they may need the assistance of those around them- just like we need the assistance of class toppers in our maths problems, or tall people to help us with electric bulbs, or just as we need small people to pass through the fence and get the cricket ball back from the neighbor’s garden.

All we need is to realize that there are times they need us, just as other times, we will need them. And all we need to realize is also that ability is never guaranteed- to lose a limb or a sense is as easy and likely as getting Imran Nazir run out- all it requires is a split second loss of your control over your brakes, or a huge lorry to come out of nowhere. How then would we like to be treated? Would the person in us change? Just how different would we be if we lost just one of the senses? Ponder over that and give them the respect they deserve. And they deserve a lot, at that. Beethoven proved it.

Let’s not talk bout the film today. It’s going to take ages to explain the pure beauty of Shiraz- made in 1925, I had the privilege of watching it with a live performance (Woodland Theater, Chennai), and let me tell you- 82 years later, our film makers haven’t risen to that level. We have moved ahead in terms of film-making technologies, but backwards in term of film-making techniques.

Source: Rituraj Sapkota aka Junktrailer, Blogsport. The Great Indian Mutiny
http://mutiny.in/2007/10/10/disabilty/

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